Contents

Biography

Conway was born in Hillston, New South Wales in the outback of Australia. Together with
her two brothers, Conway was raised in near-total isolation on a family owned
73 square kilometres (18,000 acres) tract of land, Coorain (aboriginal word for "windy
place"), which was eventually expanded into 129 square
kilometres (32,000 acres). On Coorain she lived a lonely life, and
grew up without playmates except for her brothers. She was schooled
entirely by her mother and a country governess.

Conway spent her youth working the sheep station; by age seven,
she was an important member of the workforce, helping with such
activities as herding and tending the sheep, checking the perimeter
fences and lugging heavy farm supplies around. The farm
prospered until a drought that would last for seven years. This and
her father's worsening health put an increasing burden on her
shoulders. But this ended abruptly when she was 11 and her father
drowned in an unfortunate diving accident, while trying to extend the
farm's water piping.

Initially Conway's mother, a nurse by profession, refused to leave Coorain.
But after three more years of drought she was compelled to move Jill and her
brothers to Sydney, to allow
them to lead a normal life.

Conway found the local state school a rough environment. The British manners
and accent ingrained by her parents clashed with her peers'
Australian habits provoking taunts and jeers.
This resulted in her mother enrolling her at Abbotsleigh, a private girls school, where
Conway found intellectual challenge and social
acceptance. After finishing her education at Abbotsleigh, she
enrolled at the University of Sydney where she
studied History and English and
graduated with honours in 1958. Upon graduation, Conway sought a
trainee post in the Department of External Affairs, but the
conservative all-male committee was intimidated by her and she was
refused for being, as she learned later, "too good looking" and
"too intellectually aggressive."

After this setback she travelled through Europe with her now
emotionally volatile mother. In 1960 she decided to strike out on
her own and move to the United States. At age 25, she was
accepted into the Harvard University history program.
There she assisted a Canadian
professor, John Conway, who became her husband until his death in
1995. Conway received her Ph.D. at Harvard in 1969 and
taught at the University of Toronto from 1964
to 1975. Her book True North deals about her time in
Toronto.

From 1975-1985 Conway was the president of Smith College. Since
1985 she has been a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. She has received thirty-eight honorary
degrees and awards from North American and Australian colleges,
universities and women's organizations.

One of Conway's most notable accomplishments is a program she
instigated to help students on welfare. At
the time many students who were also welfare mothers were not
pursuing liberal
arts as accepting Smith's scholarship meant losing their welfare
benefits. The students were forced to choose between supporting
their children or furthering their education. By not giving them
scholarships but paying their rent instead, Conway circumvented the state's
system. She also gave the students access to an account at local
stores, access to physicians and so on. ABC's Good
Morning America even profiled graduates of the program, giving
it national exposure. Eventually the state of Massachusetts,
convinced about the importance of the program, changed its welfare
system so that scholarship students wouldn't lose their
benefits.

Conway also created the Ada Comstock Scholars program. This
program allows older women, often with extensive work and family
obligations, to study part-time. These women can take classes for a
Bachelor's degree at Smith's at a slower pace over a longer
period.

The
Road from Coorain

Conway started writing her first memoirs after leaving Smith
College, during her period at MIT. The Road from Coorain was
published in 1989 (ISBN 0-394-57456-7) and deals with her early
life, from Coorain in Australia to Harvard in the United States.

The book starts off with her early childhood at the remote sheep
station Coorain in Hillston. Conway writes about her teenage
years in Sydney and especially
her education at the University of Sydney, where
university studies were open to women but the culture was focused
heavily on the men. She described her intellectual development
and her feelings realising there is a bias against women, after being denied a
traineeship at the Australian foreign service.